To check out the Seedtime Program: https://seedtime.us/jkmel4ukl4tonac09iap-5fs?ref=jess-sowards46
If you’d like to watch the webinar on the Seedtime program, the replay can be accessed here through Feb. 15: https://seedtime.us/roots-refuge-event?ref=rootsandrefuge
Hey ya’ll, I’m Jess from Roots & Refuge Farm
Welcome to a place that feels like home. A small farm with a big family. We hope you’ll pull up a chair, grab some coffee and visit awhile.
There was a time that all I wanted in the world was a little farm where I could raise my family and grow our food. Now, that is exactly what exists outside my door. In watching it unfold, a new dream was formed in my heart – to share this beautiful life with others and teach them the lessons we’ve learned along the way. Welcome to our journey, friend. I am so glad you’re here.
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WHERE TO FIND US (Some of the links here are affiliate links. If you purchase through our links we’ll receive a small commission but the price remains the same – OR BETTER – for you! Be sure to check for any mentioned discount codes.)
– Our Website: https://rootsandrefuge.com
– Sign up for our newsletter: https://rootsandrefuge.com/yt-signup
– Join our Patreon to get early access to podcasts and other information, plus monthly LIVES with me and Miah: https://patreon.com/rootsandrefuge
– Abundance+ (Grab a FREE 7-day trial): https://rootsandrefuge.com/yt-wilder-still
– Shop our Stickers & Shirts: https://rootsandrefuge.com/yt-shop
– Order my first book, “First Time Gardener”: https://rootsandrefuge.com/yt-ftgbook
– Order my second book, “First Time Homesteader”: https://rootsandrefuge.com/first-time-homesteader-yt
– Instagram: www.instagram.com/roots_and_refuge
– Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rootsandrefugefarm
– Email Us: rootsandrefuge@yahoo.com
– To drop us a line:
PO Box 4239
Leesville SC 29070
– To have a gift sent to our house from our Amazon wishlist: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/SFA0IZHZRCOZ?ref_=wl_share
– To support us through PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/jessicasowards
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PRODUCTS WE LOVE – You’ve probably heard me talk about these things a million times, so here’s where you can order them (and get a discount with my code!):
– Greenstalk Vertical Gardens (Use code “ROOTS10” for $10 off your order): https://rootsandrefuge.com/yt-greenstalk
– Squizito Tasting Room (Use code “ROOTS” for 10% off your order): https://rootsandrefuge.com/yt-squizito
– ButcherBox: https://rootsandrefuge.com/butcherbox
– Growers Solution: https://rootsandrefuge.com/growers-solution
– Neptune’s Harvest Fertilizer: https://rootsandrefuge.com/neptunes-harvest-fertilizer
#rootsandrefuge
38 Comments
My gosh this is exciting 😍 🎉 i am so pumped to come along yet another season of your amazing garden!!!! Woooooo
So exciting to see your home dreams about to lift off. Garden planning and house building together ❤ Looking forward to planning out our Vego beds and greenstalks. I still jot notes in a journal and keep scraps of info from plant tags on varieties that worked for me, germination time and rates. It's a pretty messy journal with dirty tags taped right on the page. Hot mess of a garden journal 😅😉
Jess!!! Can you please share where you got these sheep pens? 🙏🏻🙏🏻 We want to rotate our sheep around the pasture. Can’t find anything functional and somewhat affordable. :((
Have you Jess thought about doing a video using your freeze dryer?!
What a great video, sap and all. I take a TON of pictures and have a Google Doc journal. I make a new one every year and divide them into weekly sections. I add pictures along the way. Most importantly I take pictures of all the vegie and flower beds the beginning of every month. I add in the general weather for the week, what I sowed, planted out, harvested, garden projects and anything else I find important. I enjoy looking back and seeing the progress. I have used a few different online planning tools, I don't like to spend the money, I made my own and find it works well for me. Have a wonderful gardening season.
Ha you are such a delight! You grow those flowers 💐
We love your sappiness. ❤
I take lots of photos, but this year I am going to try to upload videos to watch back. The biggest reason I want videos to look back on is I feel like I am always behind. I always think "were my plants still this small last year at this time? " or I see other people with things already planted and think I don't have enough time, even though I do. I hope that replaying the videos for myself will settle that anxiety feeling. I just love my garden so much and am always worried it won't turn out. I know it's silly, but I do think watching the videos of myself back will help. Thank you for always being such an inspiration.
I will start my planning and take some pics , it is a really great idea. Thank you for always teaching !!
A suggestion on the peonies, they attract lots of black ants. You may want to reconsider whether or not you want to put those in the high tunnel. Since peonies are perennials you may want to put those closer to the pond.
I'm using seed time for seeding dates but I drew out my garden plan by hand and I also like sharing it with people I've sent many pictures of it to my friends as I keep adding to it
I can actually feel your excitement. It's like you can't contain yourself and it all just comes pouring out. So fun to see the happinness.
Yes, I planned my garden w seedtime too. I was a beta tester last year, and I like it better now! I posted a video of my little 5 bed garden and 3 greenstalks! I'm so excited. Last year I felt disappointed that I didn't plan for things dying and I didn't like seeing empty spaces. This year I will do better with succession, and progress. I am the WIP ❤😊TTFN
Your garden friend in Utah
Marianne 🌻
I am trying flowers for the first time this year and have no idea what I'm doing. Hope I can learn from you like I learned so much about growing food! Among what I've already started, I started some hollyhocks from seed.
Jess- when we make cowboy candy we use a variety of peppers and not just Jalapeño peppers. It is so pretty.
A bush-craft Mom, a gardener, and you don't have a knife on your hip/neck??
I've been taking pictures, but now I feel like I should take videos of it too. I'm very organized in my vegetable areas, I draw it on paper. This year I put a flower bed around my entire garden and am trying chaos gardening there. Flowers everywhere and maybe some Vining veggies on the fence
This was a fun, emotional vlog; thanks for sharing! I’m a scattered gardener & love it that way. I don’t have huge gardens on my urban lot but tuck plants in lots of places to see if they’ll produce. I’m retired now so can go get produce from my daughter’s greenhouses & preserve some for us all. We’re in sunny, but cooler Alberta, Canada. Hollyhocks are perennial here & seem to like our cold climate, as they’ll grow up to 6 – 8 feet tall. The deer have been eating mine the last few years so I have to cover with chicken wire. Blessings to all 🤗🇨🇦
Sandy brock sheep are raised as a commodity. They are raised in pens and never see grass or sky or sunshine. 😢😢
I love Sandi Brock! We had American Black Belly’s. If I knew what I know now things would have turned out better. We blame ourselves for not learning more before having them. The mamas we bought bred were full of worms and some could not service the babies. Others died during birth and even giving them shelter (they tended to have babies in the night/early morning), they brought the kids outside in freezing rain and abandoned them. Most of the lambs passed. The ones I brought in the house also passed after days and nights of tube feeding and store bought colostrum. I stayed up night after night tube feeding and keeping them warm by the fire for days only to see my lambs die. I was heartbroken and could not take more. We sold the surviving lambs and herd to the same people my hubs had gotten the five bred sheep from. We had already had a ram and bred ewe who easily had a ram lamb in the shelter at the right time of year. They were healthy.
Good evening, actually good morning ha! Ontario Canada saying sweet dreams!
We had a dry sunny Saturday, I got my beds cleaned up. Yeah for me. Not so motivated yet so I was happy with that. In one of my grow bags looks like corn coming up! I planted some last season and it didn't do anything. This will be interesting to watch. I had one, mind you one carrot out of a whole grow bag left.. It tasted great! Reason I want to grow them but one a year😕. Our local Master gardener says now's to time to plant them. We'll see. I'm going to try some winter sowing in place. See what happens. It's been so cold and wet! ☔❄ burrrrrr hopefully your enthusiasm will run off. Thanks for sharing. 🐸💛🐸💙🐸💜🐸💚😎
If the neat freaks are twitching about your seeds, they would have a full-on convulsion if they say my tiny but overcrowded space. I'll tell you what. I won't invite them over. Don't need the DRAMA! LMAO🤣🤣 🤣
Thank you Jess!
Well this year I got my first greenhouse, sadly I'm not brave enough to put my plants out their just yet, so I'm running them around to the sunny spots of the house for now. I found some squash from last year that nearly destroyed the box the greenhouse was in. I used a shovel to carefully remove the decayed bodies. Flowers are in my mind this year as well, not so much bulbs, but some varieties I hadn't tried yet. Bachelor boys buttons grew in Autumn from the seeding of summer and lived threw winter, so now I'm blessed with more of those then I can count. I'll be sharing with who ever comes by and wants some. The bees love them so much so it should be a great show. I'm trying not to get overwhelmed, but ya know it just happens. My flower garden has a bigger spot in the center I plan to put most of all of the tomatoes in since they don't need as much water and the hose barely reaches that spot. Oh yeah I got a barrel to gather rain water, it had holes in it, and I rigged up some tubes and duck tape to fill them, and for sure it held the water over night. That felt really empowering, and important❣️ Thanks for the video I always love seeing what your up too and your fun since of humar ❣️
A great webinar and I see you did pick up some tricks. Good stuff! I look forward to seeing what you do with all the gardens, but especially with the flower greenhouse. I love gardening, but there is something about flowers that i just love. You seem to have a lot of later season flowers in that bunch. Do you have some for spring and mid summer – tulips, lilies, etc? You have that cocks comb which will be amazing as well. You mentioned seeds so I am assuming the seeds will cover that off. I also hope you will be incorporating some flowers in your food gardens again – things like zinnia's, cracker jack marigolds, etc do so well. Also, how you let the basil bloom means you can cut it for cut flowers as well – may not last long as a cut flower so I would check it out. About the Peonies – they take up to 2- 3 years before you get your first bloom so you may want to rethink planting them in there – I see them more in the cottage garden. I would also suggest planting some gypsophila for a cute accent flower. Straw flowers are an amazing flower and can be dried nicely as well – you would need to start them. I think you would really like gaillardia, snap dragons, yarrow (so many colors), etc. etc. I'll stop now! lol. Good luck! Great video.
I'd find it relaxing to have a video of your greenhouse on a really rainy day. Not trying to hear you talk about anything… just one of those videos where you just work… and we get to hear how awesome the rain sounds in your greenhouse!
For a study on how long seeds are viable, search for the NPR article, "The Secret Mission To Unearth Part Of A 142-Year-Old Experiment"
OH I LOVVVVVVE the chaos!!!! LOVE I've been in the room (my sewing room) that I start my seeds in every year trying to get it al organized so when my seedlings out grow the tiny greenhouse in there, I can put them out on the shelves with grow lights and such. I use those emergency blankets as they call them to reflect the light back onto my plants AND to hide the light so it doesn't keep family awake since that was an add on and it has windows. Anyway enjoying hanging out in there thinking about what other seeds I want to get started. Got to go to the wound care Dr. tomorrow for my broken foot so I plan on stopping and looking at some seeds in Lowes. I ordered some tomato seeds mortgage lifter from Amazon and those are suppose to be here tomorrow so I can get those into some soil to. SO EXCITED to get started on another year of gardening. I pray this foot is TOTALLY healed up by the time I have to get out in that soil!!!!
Luv u n your sappiness xx
I love your sappiness!
About 18 months after moving to our new home, my garden is very much a work in progress and I was frustrated by not having achieved some goals for myself. I remembered you talking about how you like to revisit photos and videos, so I started an Instagram account for my garden. I spent a week collecting, dating and uploading all my garden photos since we moved in and now post something almost every day. I love being able to scroll back and see that we've actually achieved so much! Thanks so much for the inspiration Jess!
Starting Dahlia from seed is super easy 🥰
Gladiolus remind me of my Mom too. ❤
It’s so interesting how much I love your videos this time of year. Looking forward to cooler days so we can grow food again. We literally can’t be outside during the day. I live in a semi arid area of Australia and it’s currently 45•c-46•c we’ve been the hottest place on earth a couple of times in the last few weeks. I’ve been using sheets to protect my established trees and plants.
I’ve always taken soooo many pics but u encouraged me to videotape also. That’s been fun😅. I need to work on it, longer shots, different angles etc. I’m working on it. No greenhouse or high tunnels so I’ve started a bunch of winter containers. That’s really been an eye opener. So many plants that I couldn’t get to work in my four lighted covers w/heat mats really worked well so many plants…. 😮
Kept my seed count down this time😂. When I worked as a landscape designer & horticultural worker, we had greenhouses & misting tables so it was a real wake up call to starting seeds at home🥹. But where there’s a will, I will find a way. 😁. Really enjoying the SeedTime app. But it’s gonna cost me. I gave my computer to the kids awhile ago & hav just worked on my phone. But the design features don’t work well on my phone☹️. I don’t hav a table for design anymore either. $😂
Have you ever tasted the onion flower? They are the best, in salads and other dishes. I would not know how to store them, thats is a problem. I have no food dryer, maybe that would work.. make powder or something..
Be good! Bye 👋
I’m excited as my grow-room is filling up with life. I’ve squeezed in a little reading station so I can enjoy all the green!